An interesting article. Yet another example of how "But I believe it" as an end-all argument is causing havoc.

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[A] small but growing number of parents around the country...are claiming religious exemptions to avoid vaccinating their children when the real reason may be skepticism of the shots or concern they can cause other illnesses. Some of these parents say they are being forced to lie because of the way the vaccination laws are written in their states.

« Last Edit: October 18, 2007, 03:44:48 PM by ytterbiumanalyst »

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"It is remarkable that what we call the world...in what professes to be true...will allow in one man no blemishes, and in another no virtue."--Charles Dickens

Plain foolishness. At the present their children may be avoiding illness because of the communal immunity effect - everyone else's kids are vaccinated around them. I'm all for attachment parenting, etc... but who wants to go back to the days of whooping cough and polio epidemics? I've even seen articles encouraging parents to have chicken pox parties because the idea is that the wild chicken pox virus confers greater immunity than a killed or modified live virus.

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On the spiritual path somewhere between the Simpsons and St. Theophan the Recluse, but I still can't see the Springfield city limits sign yet.

If they don't want to immunize their kids against these highly contagious and communicable (and mutation-ready) diseases, then they should homeschool their kids. If you want to participate in the society's school system, then follow the society's laws - including getting your kids immunized. As someone who may be a father in the future, I'd be mortified if my kid got sick because a kid at the school wasn't immunized and then they passed along a mutated strain.

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"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."" Isaac Asimov

I teach microbiology and immunology at my university, so I have to deal with these issues over and over again, pretty much every semester. So little understanding among my students (including young mothers), what vaccines actually are. Arrrrrgh.

um, guys- I have one of those vaccine reactant children here at home. He will never be able to read well as a result of his violent seizure that came with his vax soup of the day. He is also mag deficient as a result as his body cannot process it or get it from food any longer.

Don't make random generalizations about these people. We still use strains of abortive tissue in some vaccines, and there are those that are morally opposed to that. We use other items as bases, to which some people are violently allergic. None of us are typically exposed to about 9 different disease pathogens all at once, especially when we have highly dysfunctional immature immune systems. Intentional dumping of pathogens into the blood stream to stimuate an immuno response might sound great for the 'common good', but on face value it's absurd when you are speaking of a 12 week old infant. And for the sake of it I will offer this: do the research on vax history yourself, don't fall down at worship at the propaganda sheets they hand out at the free clinics. i did that for a while, and come to find out they were doping my oldest child in multiplicity and had no qualms doing so.

We still use strains of abortive tissue in some vaccines, and there are those that are morally opposed to that.

Please quote your source. Anything less than a peer-reviewed medical journal is hearsay and conspiracy theory.

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We use other items as bases, to which some people are violently allergic.

Granted, and sadly these exceptions do occur. But exceptions they remain. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, as quoted by the Centers for Disease Control, the vast majority of children have no adverse side effects. To quote the CDC: "In this study, the number of fever-related seizures following DTP vaccination was six to nine per 100,000 vaccinated children. The number after MMR vaccine was 25 to 34 per 100,000 vaccinated children."

In addition, "The study found that children who suffered rare fever-related seizures after getting DTP (diphtheria, tetanus, and whole-cell pertussis) and MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccinations did not have an increased risk for subsequent seizures or neurodevelopmental (e.g., learning) disabilities."

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None of us are typically exposed to about 9 different disease pathogens all at once, especially when we have highly dysfunctional immature immune systems. Intentional dumping of pathogens into the blood stream to stimuate an immuno response might sound great for the 'common good', but on face value it's absurd when you are speaking of a 12 week old infant.

Not absurd at all. There is hard science to back it up. Unfortunately in my field I have little access to the actual figures. Dr. George?

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"It is remarkable that what we call the world...in what professes to be true...will allow in one man no blemishes, and in another no virtue."--Charles Dickens

Yes, Y., you are right. Vacinating infants is not absurd, it does make sense. There is hard statistics confirming the value of vaccination. Just rcently, Japan relaxed its law about the MMR vaccination, and they immediately had a nation-wide surge of measles. The MMR vaccine was returned, and the incidence of measles dropped again. I have a xerox article about this, published in a peer-reviewed medical journal.

Calligraphqueen, vaccines are not really pathogens. They are antigens, identical to the antigens of pathogens, but they themselves cannot be defined as "pathogens" because they are carefully tested for NOT causing infectious disease. To prepare a vaccine, they use either live *attenuated* strains of pathogens ("attenuated" means rendered non-virulent), or killed pathogens, or chemically isolated parts of pathogens, or (more recently) genetically engineered parts of pathogens. (In the last sentence, one might add the word "former" before each mentioning of "pathogens").

It is very, very unfortunate that vaccines have side effects and children suffer from these side effects. But anaesthetics also have side effects, and so do antibiotics, and generally absolutely each and every medicine.

That our kids have not had to go through some of the diseases that I did in the 60's like Measles, Mumps, Chicken Pox, German Measles/Rubella etc is something that I am very grateful for. Adding to that Polio and Smallpox (I've never seen any people who've had either, but I've read about it and seen pictures and they're horrible illnesses) and knowing what the infant and child mortality rates were from disease in earlier times, I'm very thankful for the medical advances in immunization. And just last week I got this year's "Flu vaccine". I know there are other strains of the 'bug' but to have some protection is a Good Thing. I heard about the 1918 Influenza Pandemic from older people who were children then...and survived. One man who lived in Philadelphia said that there were coffins in the streets waiting to be picked up for burial.

Ebor

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"I wish they would remember that the charge to Peter was "Feed my sheep", not "Try experiments on my rats", or even "Teach my performing dogs new tricks". - C. S. Lewis

I visited a cemetery where many of my family on my father's side are buried. When looking at it I noticed that there were an unusually large amount of graves for late 1917 and 1918 often within the same family, I remember asking my father why there were so many. His response was simple ---the 1918 Influenza Epidemic. He noted that his mother lost cousins, uncles, and aunts to the event. He stated that his grandfather, a country doctor, used to return from homes of the ill, strip his clothes off and burn them and then naked scrub himself with lye soap and dress in clean clothes before entering his home in order to not bring the disease home with him---must have worked she lost no brothers or sisters to the epidemic. Thanks be to God there are vaccines around to limit the epidemics that previously devastated countries and villages around the world.